A night to remember
by Linuial
Summary: Both Harry and Draco blinked. And blinked again. Then rubbed their eyes. Then blinked again. They seemed to be standing in the middle of a circle of drunken, singing, swaying people. Oh Boy.


A night to remember 

Harry Potter and the Sealed Knot incident.   
  
Discaimer: The company is not liable for any foolishness you may experience from believing that these characters are not the creations of a certain J.K. Rowling. We also are not responsible for any loss of life, sexual prowess, or mental state while reading this fiction. Please enjoy your day :D   
  
A/N: see the end for notes on the Sealed Knot.   
  
"Come back here! Don't just walk away you spineless coward!"   
The retreating boy froze in his step. Without turning around he said, "What did you call me?" Harry relaxed and smiled; this was more like it.   
"A coward. Why? Can't you understand words of more than one syllable?"   
"I'm surprised you even know what a syllable is, Potter. Has Granger been giving you "Extra tuition"?" The boy raised his eyebrows suggestively. Crabbe and Goyle snickered. "I'm sure she must be very good at it, considering how many lessons she takes from Professor Snape…" Hermione bristled.   
"Snape?! He's disgusting! And so are you, Malfoy!"   
"Ahh eloquent as ever, the muggle's daughter," Malfoy sneered.   
"I'd rather be a muggle, than a good-for-nothing social parasite like you and the rest of your family," shouted Ron.   
"Ahh, the shadow has a voice. Tell me, Weasly…"   
Harry let Malfoy's comments wash over him. This was nothing new. The fights between the terrible trio and Malfoy's gang were so frequent nowadays that even the teachers ignored them.   
"… Couldn't your family afford to buy you any manners?"   
"With all your money, Malfoy, you'd think you'd be able to buy some new insults," Harry spat, bored with all of this.   
"At least with my money comes a certain sense of class."   
"And a certain amount of blood on your hands."   
"I can't imagine what you could be alluding to, Potter."   
"The fact your parents served the Dark Lord, and all of that money was made from killing innocent people"   
"What like your parents Potter?" At this Hermione and Ron, who had been watching this exchange like a tennis match, gasped. Harry just tensed slightly and his eyes flashed. Within a heartbeat he had pulled his wand and pointed it at Malfoy's chest. Draco shot his cronies a triumphant look, as he did the same.   
"Let's settle this once and for all, Potter," he drawled.   
"Harry! Don't!" Hermione screeched.   
"Stay out of this, mudblood!"   
Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Both boys knew in that instant that the other would fire, and they had to do it first. The blasts from both wands met in the middle, Blue and red, red and blue mingling to create an intense white light. All onlookers were blinded by its brightness, but when their eyes readjusted to the gloom in the corridor the scene that met them was not what they expected.   
Hermione blinked and rubbed her eyes, but the two people in front of her did not change. The man and woman still stood there, looking decidedly puzzled. She looked on in morbid fascination, taking in the details of what these two looked to be wearing. The man was wearing some kind of breeches, and a scruffy red doublet like the ones she had seen in her history books. The woman on the other hand was wearing a long dress with lacing criss-crossing down the front, looking like she had stepped directly out of a low-budget costume drama. Both looked slightly disgruntled. Hermione's brain went into overdrive. These people were obviously from the past. Harry and Malfoy's duel had sent them back into the past, and replaced them with these people. She did the first thing that came into her head and acted as an ambassador for her time.   
"This is the year 1997, and yes this is England."   
"Fuckoff."   
  
~~*~~   
  
Both Harry and Draco blinked. And blinked again. Then rubbed their eyes. Then blinked again. They seemed to be standing in the middle of a circle of drunken, singing, swaying people.   
"Don't bend down when King's Guard's around, or you'll get a willy up the bum." They sang to the tune of "Don't dilly-dally on the way" Both boys blanched. What had happened? Where the hell were they? And why were all these people dressed in seventeenth century clothing? They could be pretty sure they weren't *in* the seventeenth century, as all the people were sitting on/falling off deck chairs and drinking various drink such as Carling Black, Bacardi Breezers and Guiness out of very twentieth-century containers. But before they could further ponder their predicament, someone noticed them.   
"Who the hell are you, and where's Al and Linda?" The blonde woman asked.   
"Are you the male strippers we ordered?" asked another blonde woman. This was met with calls of "Get yer kit off!" and "Phwoar!" from the other women in the circle. The men looked on with mild amusement.   
"No, seriously, where's Al and Linda? If they've gone to the beer tent without us…" The first woman looked murderous.   
"Well it's about time we re-locate anyway." The circle seemed to have lost interest in them, after establishing they weren't *actually* male strippers. "We're running out of the punch anyway." Harry looked where the man was indicating and saw a washing-up bowl filled with some kind of liquid with unspecified bits of vegetation floating in it. He thought he could see some kind of haze shimmering above it. Whatever it was, it was *strong*… Harry looked around him. People seemed to be moving lethargically from their seats, drawn to some undefined destination.   
"Hello? Where am I? What the hell's going on?"   
"Where the fuck have you brought us, Potter? Where are these damn muggles going, and why are they ignoring me? No-one ignores a Malfoy!"   
"Umm, excuse me, but have you paid your membership?" a small man with glasses hesitantly asked them.   
"What membership? Where are we?" Harry felt as if his head would explode.   
"You're in Newcastle's tercio camp site." But before Harry could ask what that meant, the man was whisked away by a group of huge men that Harry did *not* want to mess with. These looked like the kind of men that could crush your skull with one hand, and scratch their arses with the other.   
"C'mon Hobbit, valuable drinking time is being wasted!" Harry shook his head. Did someone just call that man "Hobbit"? What was going on?   
"Draaaaaaco!" He heard the shout and spun around to see that Malfoy had acquired a blonde necklace. "And you must be Harry Potter! Wow! This is so cool! How did you get here?"   
"We have no bloody idea!" Harry said. Draco just stood there in stunned silence, with the girl hanging around his neck. "And how the hell do you know who I am? You can't be a witch - You'd be at Hogwarts" At this the girl collapsed in nearly hysterical giggles. Harry felt like doing that himself.   
"Hogwarts!" she managed to gasp. "I never thought I'd hear it actually talked about! Everyone knows about you two!"   
"What even," Draco paused in disgust. "Muggles?" The girl squeaked.   
"You said the word!" At this she actually sat down on the floor and took a few deep breaths. This seemed to steady her. She stood up and looked Harry in the eye. "You are in the muggle world, to be precise Eye in Suffolk."   
"Suffolk!?" She shushed Draco with a finger to his lips. He flinched at the muggle girl's touch.   
"Don't interrupt. I don't know how you got here, or how we're going to you get back, but it doesn't look like anyone else recognises you," She gestured at the rest of the circle who were still gravitating towards the beer tent. "Which is weird. My friend Ellie seems to think you're just two new members. I'm Fiona by the way. We have to get you back, but that doesn't mean I'm going to miss a night in the beer tent, so it looks like you two will just have to come with me." She nodded emphatically and looked decidedly gleeful at this prospect. This was all too much for Draco to comprehend.   
He promptly fainted.   
  
~~*~~   
  
"Fuckoff."   
"I'm sorry, what?" Hermione could swear that the man had told her to fuck off. But that couldn't be! People from the seventeenth century would not tell her to "Fuck off"   
"Don't worry about him, he's a sweetie. Does the ironing at home." The woman said, plucking the still lit cigarette from her mouth. Cigarette? Ironing? Something was very wrong.   
"Excuse me, but who are you?" she was almost afraid to ask.   
"Oh, sorry love, where are my manners? I'm Linda, and this is my significant other Alistair. Al, put that down." The woman didn't bat an eyelid as Alistair tried to balance one of the cauldrons on his head.   
"Look! I'm a mushroom! Darth Mushroom!"   
"Oh god. Who gave him sugar?" the woman stubbed out her cigarette, but made no move to stop the man as he tried to climb onto the small window ledge. Hermione glanced from the dishevelled woman to the clearly insane man, and for once was at a loss for words. She glanced again at the man, who had somehow managed to find a sheet and was now preparing to *actually* jump from the window. His feet left the ledge and her mind suddenly snapped into action. She quickly snatched her wand from her pocket and managed a hasty "Wingardium Leviosa!" before the man hit the ground.   
This was going to be a very long day. She sighed, shot a look at Ron, who was standing there bewildered, and began to do what she did best - clean up after Harry Potter.   
  
~~*~~   
  
They heard the music and rowdy shouting long before they reached their destination.   
"What the hell is that?" Draco demanded, gratingly.   
"It's the beer tent."   
"The what?"   
"The B-E-E-R T-E-N-T" the girl spelled out. "It's where we go to get drunk, dance and generally be merry." She grinned insanely, and Harry began to have doubts about their impromptu guide. "What are you guys having?"   
"I'll have a butterbeer, please?" asked Harry. The girl squeaked at the word butterbeer, and proceeded to order him a pint of 'Old Grumbleberry'   
"It's the closest I could get… Now what do you want, honey?"   
"Honey?!?" Draco looked as if he would like to either kill the girl or run screaming to the hills. His mouth worked noiselessly for a moment, then; "My father said never to touch anything that wasn't *entirely* wizarding." He sneered. Fiona raised an eyebrow.   
"You still do what your father tells you to?"   
"Of course not!" he said, indignantly. "I'll have the same as *him*," he gestured towards Harry, who looked like he was thoroughly enjoying his pint. Fiona smiled and whispered under her breath.   
"Yes! Who'd have thought reverse psychology actually works?" Fiona turned to the bartender and ordered two more drinks, then turned back to a greatly disgruntled Draco.   
"Give me that!" he snapped, as if the girl who held his drink was somehow contaminating it. He took a large swig, and his expression rapidly changed. "Urgh! What is this stuff!? It doesn't taste like butterbeer."   
"That's because it's alcoholic," the girl nodded sagely. Draco looked at his drink suspiciously.   
"Great, isn't it?" Harry commented cheerily, happy to have one up on Draco. Draco furiously attacked his pint.   
"Steady on! You'll choke!" warned Fiona. "You get used to the taste after a while, and well… you know the effects of alcohol…" she winked at him, and Draco visibly winced, gingerly putting his drink aside. But before he could muster a scathing remark both he and Harry were grabbed by the arm and pulled into the heaving throng of dancing people.   
"Mustang Sally!" the girls sang on stage, and Harry looked cautiously around. The people dancing before him were in various states of disarray, having shed assorted items of seventeenth-century clothing to allow more freedom of movement - and boy were they taking advantage of that freedom. He looked to his right to see a group of people who had linked arms at the shoulders and begun to jump vaguely in time, bashing into people left, right and centre, sending them flying. They were becoming more frenzied as the singers raised the volume and went into some sort of choreographed dance. The lady jumping at the end of the dancing row, for so Harry felt she had to be called, was flung backwards into a gentleman dancing more quietly. He spun away, cursing and showering himself and his friends with beer. The dancers appeared to find this hilarious, and jumped all the more violently. They seemed to have set up a rivalry with another large team of dancers, and were ramming them viciously, not caring how many people were injured.   
"Umm… Excuse me?" he tried to say to the girl, but she was flinging herself onto the back of the mob, and couldn't hear him. He was shocked, before he realised that everyone involved was certainly giving as good as they got. He snuck a glance at Draco, who had gone exceptionally pale (that is paler than usual) and was not even bothering to hide the fear in he eyes. He caught Harry looking at him, and the fear changed to a look of distain.   
"Now look what you've got us into, Potter," he sneered, but the effect was somewhat lost, as he had to shout above the heavy bass of the music.   
"Me?! It was you who got us into this mess!"   
"None of *my* spells have ever failed on me, I don't *make* mistakes." Harry pulled his wand again, and everything could have gotten extremely nasty, if Fiona hadn't chosen that moment to crash sideways into him, knocking the wand from his hand.   
"Sorry!" shouted the girl, above the din, but at one look at the murderous gleam in his eye her manner changed. "Have you two been behaving yourselves?"   
Draco sneered. "No. Actually we're trying to kill each other, if you must know." The girl paused and looked puzzled.   
"Well… Don't." She grabbed their arms again. "C'mon and dance."   
"No, no, really it's okay!" Harry protested but he was flung into the thick of the mêlée. In order not to get crushed, he began to jump in time with the rest of them. He could see Draco on the other side of the circle that was forming around them. He could hear people whooping and yelling all around him, and he realised that they were expected to do some type of dance. Absolutely terrified he began to move in time with the music. This was greeted by whoops and catcalls, and Harry began to grin. This was actually fun, and the look of horror on Draco's face as he was forced to dance by a blonde woman who had taken control of his arms was priceless. He almost collapsed laughing as women, who were trying their best to strip him, surrounded Draco. Draco made a gargled noise as his shirt was lifted and struggled away from them. The women pouted, but a feral gleam came into the leader's eyes as she noticed Harry.   
Harry was entirely oblivious to the women's intent until they had completely surrounded him, and by then it was too late. He felt hands grab him from all sides, and his shirt was lifted over his head. This was greeted by a large shout from the on looking crowd.   
"Oh God! What've I got myself into now?" he wondered, before the women closed in again.   
  
A/N This is a WIP. I wasn't going to post this until I'd finished it, but I don't know what to do with it, and I'm just too damn impatient, so please review and tell me what's good/bad so I can edit it in the future… BTW The Sealed Knot is a re-enactment society (in case you haven't guessed) We re-enact the English Civil War. It's great *g* Well.. I enjoy it. For more info see The Sealed Knot website 


End file.
